Has it really been two years? I am losing track of time lately, today I thought my dog was a year old and he’s actually five years old. Makes me wonder what else I’m missing.
This comic is apparently older than my child and yet my child is somehow now 7.
I also discovered 2 days after my birthday this year that I somehow spent the entirety of last year genuinely thinking I was a year older than I actually was. Just skipped RIGHT over 35 apparently. Told people I was turning 37. But no…apparently I am 36. Again.
So yeah…what even is time…
(I actually just finished re-reading DoA from the beginning this week and wow I can’t believe it’s been over 10 years!)
Re-reading the comic from the start this week I got to Dorothy’s Yale letter again and went “Oh…I wonder if she’s gonna go…will she be written out of the comic?” But then I realized it’s cool, even if she decides to go, that’ll probably be like a decade from now, we got lots of time with her still.
oh my god I can’t believe it’s already been 2 years since the big 10 year anniversary time skip
I also can’t believe I’ve been reading for like 5 years at this point
So basically what everyone was expecting it to have been, damn you and your teasing Willis. We’re going to pass our own Halloween before we get any answers.
Tragically, Mary makes seven appearances in the next storyline. Maybe they’ll all be grouped together at the end, but the storyline isn’t a super long one either.
Hmm…Fuckface makes 11 appearances. My prediction is that someone went to play with Fuckface while Malaya wasn’t in, something goes wrong (possibly a molt being mistaken for something worse), then Billie and Ruth have to take him to the emergency vet and things spiral out of control from there.
Hm? No, that was a typo. Or a froydian slip. Or possibly I lost track of who I was talking about mid-sentence. Idk, I’ve been blazed to the point of nigh-incoherence every night for like a week now. If I updated my pronouns during that time, no I didn’t.
If you told 2005 me that “Newgrounds Chat” is a thing, I’d write it off as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. I hope the site’s discourse has matured in the last… 17 (?!) years!
I clicked on a few pages from that link, as it was interesting, and stumbled into Jacob telling Joyce “You’ve got a leather jacket. That means YOU make the rules.” And the FIRST rule she made was about what other people can put inside themselves.
*Squints carefully at Christian America*
*sucks air in over teeth*
*departs the comments section*
My guess is that Mary doesn’t actually know any more than us, she’s just heard other people use that as an explanation and now repeats it to sound knowledgeable.
I wonder if we’ll get an objective view of what ‘actually’ happened, or if different characters will retell the same story from their own perspectives…
So far, all our flashbacks have been objective, but they’ve sometimes left out important bits that didn’t become clear until we saw the same scene from another characters perspective.
Before then, it seemed she hadn’t been drinking. Since then, I don’t think there’s been indication of more drinking. That may have given her the idea that she can handle drinking once in a while– which, honestly some recovering alcoholics can, but for Ruth, it feels too recent, and this instance of seeking out alcohol is too “need this to deal with emotions” to feel comfortable.
Yeah I thought she was maybe at a place where she was doing well with it and able to responsibly drink, socially. I wasn’t, like, whole-hog *committed* to that idea, since people in recovery sometimes can’t manage that, or can’t for a while, but it looked possible. Seeing this reaction here really dashes my hopes in that regard, and makes me deeply frustrated with Jennifer. Yes, Ruth is responsible for her own actions, but Jennifer’s little fit of pique here seems designed to drag Ruth back into a dynamic that was deeply shitty for Ruth, Jennifer, and frankly everyone round them.
Or maybe someone who has a clear drinking problem and just assaulted her ex in front of you probably just showed some flags so red they could be Buccaneers logos.
Willis DID say “it is very blue”. That could mean it figuratively too, yes, but I sure hope not literally.
I like all the bright and stimulating colors of this comic, doing away with them during one of the most fun-packed holidays of the year seems like cheating at best, and a let-down at worse.
Billie ate Ruth’s little brother as a party trick, but forgot to take him back out and she fused with his soul, grossing Ruth out and causing her to break up with Billhoward.
Wait, are you sure? Because I’m not sure I see what I did there. Did I accidentally reference something? Is there some wordplay I’m missing? Honestly, I wasn’t even super proud of that joke.
OP asked what happened. They asked for wrong answers only. Since some of us were thinking nothing happened, I thought you were implying something did actually happen.
While Ruth was preoccupied with Billie, Carol broke into the dorm, said “It’s Carolin’ time,” and Caroled all over everybody. Her singing voice was so awful that Agatha’s roommate died from complications due to a ruptured eardrum, after which Ruth decided to purge her life of all distractions so that such a fate would never befall another student under her authority.
Mary seduced Billie, made sure Ruth caught them together, and then converted a distraught Billie to her particular sector of Christianity. Hence her current smugness.
After realizing the phrase “Don’t Stop Believing” only occurs at the end of the song, its only chorus, “Don’t” by Neil Cicierega is now being played at the broken strike plate
I guess Mary’s art is staying up until Groundhog Day
What the hell was Halloween!? I kept my piece about it because I thought it would be addressed in do time but Willis keeps fucking with us by dangling it over our heads like one does with a dog and a treat it really wants.
I think it’s fair to discuss whether this whole something-big-happened-over-the-timeskip style of storytelling is really enjoyable/effective or not, but it’s pretty funny to me that people are reaching their breaking point with it so close to the reveal.
I mean, assuming “This Was Halloween” is actually a reveal. If it’s more fucking with us…
Personally I was never interested in Halloween and still am not. I figure the time skip shook up the status quo a bit and the mysteries of what happened made it fun. We don’t really need to know the why of things sometimes. Sometimes the answers are even unsatisfying. I tr
No, Halloween does go on for a while in parts of the states. There’s ding-dong doorbell night, mischief night (also called Devil’s Night), Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Dia de Muertos… sometimes these happen on the same night, sometimes the festivities get spread out over a week or more. Depends on the community.
I like the Legend of Korra, but I’m forever bitter that Toph grew up to be a cop.
(And in a wider sense, yeah, sometimes– often– the flashforwards at the ends of shows or as extras or whatever just aren’t necessary. Like, I mostly watch shows where I like the characters, so it’s nice to see them happy, but it feels superficial.)
Tops being a cop isn’t so bad in Avatar, although yeah it is disappointing. Especially since she was so anti-authority. I chose to see it as the more Hollywood idealized version of cops than the incompetent and/or corrupt and cowardly bullies we have in real life.
Eh, copaganda isn’t a great defense, though I see the show as more police-neutral overall. Which still isn’t great for Toph.
It’s also, like, the Avatar comics start to show stepping stones for how Toph got to be a cop, but those comics are coming out after Legend of Korra, so instead of natural character growth and exploration, it just feels forced with a foregone conclusion.
Yeah. I did love the ending, but I felt they could have made the queer text more explicit. They kind of beat around the bush when they had a beautiful lady-lady love story on their hands.
“They could have made the queer text more explicit”– well, I don’t know about that. I mean, I would have loved it, but they had to fight hard enough to do what they did. It’s possible that they really *couldn’t* have done much more. To me, what we did get felt very natural, and it served a very important place in the trajectory of queer content in kids’ shows.
All that said, I do respect the desire for there to have been more. There’s a Korra movie planned for the future, so if that happens, hopefully we’ll get a good amount of Korrasami content (but not in the form of drama, ideally– I think in the first two seasons, the show was really bogged down by the way shipping stuff was handled). The comics have kisses, but I want to see them animated.
I usually think of Star Wars and Midichlorians. Is Star Wars better now that we know what the Force is? Not really, not to me anyway, it was better as a mystery. Knowing why Ruth and Billie, or to a lesser extent Walky and Amber broke up might be interesting, or it might not live up to expectation, or be unsatisfying in some other way.
Saying just don’t read isn’t really a great answer or even really the point. I’m not particularly adverse to knowing the answer and the comment discussions I like engaging with make it virtually impossible to stay ignorant anyway.
I was just giving my opinion on the story telling devise of this type of flashback. Like I said I trust Willis to tell a good story, I just think sometimes a mystery is better. We don’t always have to know every detail. I can respect that some readers do like having every answer though.
Is that a reference to how mitochondria are actually bacteria that merged with eukariotic cells to eventually change all of life on earth over a billion years ago? 😃
The thing with midichlorians is they were tacked on after the fact. That’s risky, you aren’t always going to come up with something worth explaining.
When it’s something that people had planned in advance, deciding a certain aspect of the story is better to save as a surprise for later on, it tends to go a bit better.
The midichlorians don’t bother me at all, and I don’t get why they make so many people upset. The midichlorians aren’t even plot-relevant; even the Force is still a mystery (…so, instead of humans having magic powers, their endosymbionts have magic powers… nothing has actually changed there).
It’s weird seeing Mary don’t use a possibility for tell her, distorted, version of the story to someone so shocked and confused to probably believe in everything she will say. I’m sad for Jason here. Ruth is still no over her dangerous ex and just go away for poisson herself with alcohol. Probably the best thing for him is go away, but disgracefully he seems to really like Ruth a lot.
…On a completely unrelated note, I finally just finished the very last assignment for a project I’ve been working on for the past 25 months.
All done. No more. All gone. (As I used to say to the pup dog, when explaining why I could no longer play with him or give him treats.)
Time to walk away, delete all my files, reformat my brain. No more of that whole field of knowledge. All done. Gotta just admit defeat (or at least a tactical retreat and impasse) and walk away.
Time to fill the brain up with new information, get ready to plunge into a whole different field, after 25 months’ absence from it.
It’s scary. And sad. And a little peaceful. And bittersweet. And regretful. It’s all those things.
We didn’t succeed in our mission. But the mission didn’t quite beat us yet, either. So it’s a tactical retreat, to conserve forces and defend other fronts. With hope that the reinforcements will come from somewhere else, and will be enough.
Wait til it turns out Laura was leading the research team that’s gonna invent Sephiroth. You’re gonna look silly and my personal bunker will look really smart in hindsight.
Well, a sad place, anyway. It’s like that old song goes: “Sadness comes from a quiet place.”
(Plays Radical Dance Faction on the hacked Muzak: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EvCbVTt9QhU )
I have been looking forward to Halloween since forever, and like I’m obviously super excited to learn about all the- drama, plot, backstory and everything!
…on the other hand I think I’m equally, if not more excited, to see costumes.
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Jason summarising the DoA comments for the last TWO YEARS
Has it really been two years? I am losing track of time lately, today I thought my dog was a year old and he’s actually five years old. Makes me wonder what else I’m missing.
The global events of the last two years and their heavy impacts really seem to distort one’s sense of time and space. 😵💫
Also, Spiders are on the increase.
Two and a half years
Yeah the past 2 years have somehow felt like forever and only a couple months at the same time.
September 10 2020 was the first strip of the new semester (not counting the art montage)
This comic is apparently older than my child and yet my child is somehow now 7.
I also discovered 2 days after my birthday this year that I somehow spent the entirety of last year genuinely thinking I was a year older than I actually was. Just skipped RIGHT over 35 apparently. Told people I was turning 37. But no…apparently I am 36. Again.
So yeah…what even is time…
(I actually just finished re-reading DoA from the beginning this week and wow I can’t believe it’s been over 10 years!)
………… wait what
two what
what did you just say
It has been 662 days since it was confirmed we would be skipping over Halloween.
(663 days for Patreon readers)
fukkin RIGHT
in this rhythm, it will too like, 8 years, to Joe start date Joyce, or Dorothy leaves the Campus
Re-reading the comic from the start this week I got to Dorothy’s Yale letter again and went “Oh…I wonder if she’s gonna go…will she be written out of the comic?” But then I realized it’s cool, even if she decides to go, that’ll probably be like a decade from now, we got lots of time with her still.
me realizing that Mike’s been dead for 2 years :notlikethis:
Mike’s been dead for TWO YEARS!?!?!
oh my god I can’t believe it’s already been 2 years since the big 10 year anniversary time skip
I also can’t believe I’ve been reading for like 5 years at this point
Brace yourselves! This is gonna be a crazy WILD ride back in time!!!!
*demonic laughter*
🌌 ⏳ ⏰ ⌛ ✌️😈
*plays “Apocalypshit” by Molotov on hacked muzak*
Well thats not helpful at all
Tomorrow starts the chapter “This Was Halloween.”
Now thats helpful
As a surprise it’s one strip long, and that strip is just Mary in her bedroom ranting and raving about demonic holidays.
Never been so sad it’s not april 1st tomorrow
My prediction for today’s strip wasn’t far off. Nice.
WHAT HAPPENED ON HALLOWEEN??????
Seems like we’re about to find out
In a month or two.
We’re finally gonna find out what happened…
Back then…
[Voice echoing]
Back then…
[Screen goes all wavy]
Back then…
So basically what everyone was expecting it to have been, damn you and your teasing Willis. We’re going to pass our own Halloween before we get any answers.
Naw, we’ll probably get some answers in the coming storyline, which goes tomorrow through some time in August.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t find out until actual Halloween 2022
Fuck off and die, Mary.
If only it were so simple; even if she was about to die, I’d expect her to make time to insult one more person before she goes to hell.
Yeah but then she’s permanently gone.
With our luck, she’d come back after 3 days because her soul was rejected from all the after lives.
Oh thanks for reminding me!!! Last chance to do this!
Fuck off and die, Mary! 🖕😄
Why is this the last chance to do this?
I mean until Mary appears, which is probably gonna be a while.
Tragically, Mary makes seven appearances in the next storyline. Maybe they’ll all be grouped together at the end, but the storyline isn’t a super long one either.
How do you know this? What dark magics?
A fair description for my source… Twitter.
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1503516472101978112
Hmm…Fuckface makes 11 appearances. My prediction is that someone went to play with Fuckface while Malaya wasn’t in, something goes wrong (possibly a molt being mistaken for something worse), then Billie and Ruth have to take him to the emergency vet and things spiral out of control from there.
Oh no…. uh… why haven’t we seen Fuckface since the time-skip? 😨
If you think that’s worthy of attribution to dark magics, you haven’t even seen what’s in store. 😈
The Ritual wasn’t completed and so the Old Ones will rise from the earth and reclaim the lands they wrought. So, like, probably no WiFi for a while.
Speaking of cosmic horrors, did you know I just completed a map of Galasso’s?
A real labyrinth, I tell ya! Also did you know Newgrounds has a chat feature?
#TomFulp’sAss
If it’s possible, maybe we can use the chat feature to collab on the game? It’d just be you and me and brainstorming!
I keep forgetting Newgrounds exists. It’s a neat website. Lots of talented creators on there.
RIGHT?!?! Also, much less censors on your ass all the time!
https://www.newgrounds.com/chat
It’s a shame about that Incident last year. O/The staff hand their hands full that week.
You know what isn’t a shame? Log into your Newgrounds account and see! 😉
Sounds like more of a job for Sober Taffy. My ass barely makin’ sentences.
Can drunk Taffy still play Yugioh? 😛
Drunk Taffy can’t even tie her own shoes. It’s High Taffy ya gotta worry about, they’re dangerous at cards.
Thanks for the tip, much appreciated! 😊
Also, I take it I should update your preferred pronouns?
Hm? No, that was a typo. Or a froydian slip. Or possibly I lost track of who I was talking about mid-sentence. Idk, I’ve been blazed to the point of nigh-incoherence every night for like a week now. If I updated my pronouns during that time, no I didn’t.
Ah, thanks for clean that up, friend. 😌
If you told 2005 me that “Newgrounds Chat” is a thing, I’d write it off as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. I hope the site’s discourse has matured in the last… 17 (?!) years!
Sorry, am I missing something here? Was it really toxic for a long time even relative to the vast majority of the internet?
I ask because, besides contacting prominent creators, I was really only ever there for the games and art. And as of more recently lack of censorship.
It was just your garden-variety mid-2000s teenage edgelord bullshit.
It was nicer than the imageboards, but rougher than DeviantArt.
Nah, Satan made her immortal so as to create Hell on Earth
I was gonna complain on the cliffhanger you left us, but I remember that you update during the weekend.
Yes… Ha ha ha… Yes..
Also this was a good storyline. Enjoyed it a lot and “Billie” is hands down my favourite individual update from this entire comic.
Very eager to see what comes next
Yeah, Billie was an excellent comic. Tons of visual story telling crammed into a very small space.
Why does Mary know? Also Ruth turning to drinking is not a good sign. Also also Jason’s bartender class really should give him better insight.
Sounds like Halloween was a bad time all around, makes sense that Mary was there.
I’d assume it was a very public breakup.
Halloween party I assume. Hopefully not one she was present for, but who knows
Mary has been established to LOVE Halloween.
Love? Sarah loves Halloween, but as far as I know, Mary is just “not averse” to it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/discretionary/
Hm. I see.
For Mary, “not averse” is the closest possible emotion to love.
I clicked on a few pages from that link, as it was interesting, and stumbled into Jacob telling Joyce “You’ve got a leather jacket. That means YOU make the rules.” And the FIRST rule she made was about what other people can put inside themselves.
*Squints carefully at Christian America*
*sucks air in over teeth*
*departs the comments section*
My guess is that Mary doesn’t actually know any more than us, she’s just heard other people use that as an explanation and now repeats it to sound knowledgeable.
Maybe she caused it.
I wonder if we’ll get an objective view of what ‘actually’ happened, or if different characters will retell the same story from their own perspectives…
Ooh, I hope that’s what happens. Rashamon stories are a lot of fun.
So far, all our flashbacks have been objective, but they’ve sometimes left out important bits that didn’t become clear until we saw the same scene from another characters perspective.
Jason is us and we are Jason.
I heavily disagree with this statement.
…I heard that in an English accent. 😉
Oh good Ruth is still drinking. So none of the problems were solved.
Jason seriously, freckles aren’t worth it. Get out of there.
I suspect Ruth had stopped drinking and this is her falling off the wagon due to Billie/Jennifer and her little tantrum.
Ruth drank on her 21st birthday, when she and Jason bonded.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/superlative/
Before then, it seemed she hadn’t been drinking. Since then, I don’t think there’s been indication of more drinking. That may have given her the idea that she can handle drinking once in a while– which, honestly some recovering alcoholics can, but for Ruth, it feels too recent, and this instance of seeking out alcohol is too “need this to deal with emotions” to feel comfortable.
[Accidental flag. Fat fingered on mobile]
That’s right. I thought was pre timeskip for some reason
I read “bonded” as “boned” first.
In comic time, that was only a couple of days ago.
Yeah I thought she was maybe at a place where she was doing well with it and able to responsibly drink, socially. I wasn’t, like, whole-hog *committed* to that idea, since people in recovery sometimes can’t manage that, or can’t for a while, but it looked possible. Seeing this reaction here really dashes my hopes in that regard, and makes me deeply frustrated with Jennifer. Yes, Ruth is responsible for her own actions, but Jennifer’s little fit of pique here seems designed to drag Ruth back into a dynamic that was deeply shitty for Ruth, Jennifer, and frankly everyone round them.
Ruth was drunk when she met Jason.
“Woman have problem, not worth dating.”
No, no… I can fix her.
God, same
“I can make her worse.” – Jenifer probably.
Come on, roll a Jenifer gravitar for this one . . .
Or maybe someone who has a clear drinking problem and just assaulted her ex in front of you probably just showed some flags so red they could be Buccaneers logos.
No, Ruth did not “assault” Billie. She hit her back. Billie started it and Jason saw it. I’m not even touching that “drinking problem” crack, though.
I mean Ruth is a confirmed alcoholic the entire first half of this series goes over this. That’s not a crack. Thems the facts.
We read the same comic. I’m not refuting anything. I said I wasn’t touching it. There is a difference.
Halloween gonna start on July 2nd? o boy, that’s gonna be quite a birthday present!
Happy Halloween, and Happy Birthday, Mr D!
And most like will end right before October if it’s timed right.
Also I accidentally flagged your comment when I meant to hit reply, sorry
I REMEMBER
DOING THE TIME WARP
DRINKING
THOSE MOMENTS WHEN…
I wonder if the Halloween chapter is indeed a flashback like the name implies if that whole chapter will be in the flashback blue tint?
Willis DID say “it is very blue”. That could mean it figuratively too, yes, but I sure hope not literally.
I like all the bright and stimulating colors of this comic, doing away with them during one of the most fun-packed holidays of the year seems like cheating at best, and a let-down at worse.
I think Willis meant “Very Blue,” as in, the color of flashbacks.
…Some reason, none of my comments are posting.
Which is a shame because Halloween is a chance to be very colorful.
OR ARE THEY?!
WHAT HAPPENED ON HALLOWEEN??
Le epic cringe, I bet.
Costumes, candy, and drama.
Many epic Slipshine openings.
Halloween.
The night if masks where we have a chance to drop ours.
Or just fucking hang out and watch cheesy shit.
We likes to watch the spooky movies, yes. Play the games and drink the ciders, gollum.
“Do you like scary movies?” 😆
Just noticed that Sarah never replaced her halloween witch portrait. Delightful
Hmm, first message didn’t send – Trying again!
“Oooo. Nice catch!”
She paid two pretzels for that, she needs to get her money’s worth. (see archive link above)
And to think if Mary ever goes on a pretentious pious pilgrimage, she could easily sustain herself by drawing for food on the road!!! 😆
if there was a halloween party, who had been there?
Nice touch with the Halloween picture still on the door (or perhaps not actually still on the door/ a temporal connection to the oncoming flashback)
I’m a little surprised Mary actually drew that for her. It seems out of character for her to do something nice like that.
Well it wasn’t out of pure altruism. She got two pretzels out of it.
And more of her art is now on public display.
Right, lest we forget that ever-important exposure.
Plus, she got to depict Sarah as an unrepentant witch being tortured in hell. Win win!
Readers beware, you’re in for a
scaredramatic reveal!WHAT HAPPENED ON HALLOWEEN
WE MUST KNOW
Quick, before we start getting real answers:
What happened on Halloween? Wrong answers only.
Jennifer was wronged.
The Cheese appeared, watched Dexter and Monkey Master with Walky, then left, with some McNuggets for the road.
Ruth got too drunk at the party and Jennifer broke up with her for falling off the wagon?
Emo-than got an alien parasite.
Billie ate Ruth’s little brother as a party trick, but forgot to take him back out and she fused with his soul, grossing Ruth out and causing her to break up with Billhoward.
Absolutely nothing. It’s been a red herring this whole time.
I see what you did there.
Wait, are you sure? Because I’m not sure I see what I did there. Did I accidentally reference something? Is there some wordplay I’m missing? Honestly, I wasn’t even super proud of that joke.
Basically me whenever I’m online 😅
OP asked what happened. They asked for wrong answers only. Since some of us were thinking nothing happened, I thought you were implying something did actually happen.
Red Herring was fucking framed, every single time. Freddy just had a fucking vendetta.
Except for that one time it actually was Red Herring.
7 hours to realize this was a pup named scooby doo reference.
This whole time I’m wondering what Freddy Kruger has to do with red herrings.
(Smacks forehead)
Nostalgia bomb accepted.
I can hear Freddy’s crazed tinfoil hat chatter now “IT WAS RED HERRING!”
Ruth caught Jennifer making out with Alice.
No, no, that was Alice and Bob with Carol and Mike.
While Ruth was preoccupied with Billie, Carol broke into the dorm, said “It’s Carolin’ time,” and Caroled all over everybody. Her singing voice was so awful that Agatha’s roommate died from complications due to a ruptured eardrum, after which Ruth decided to purge her life of all distractions so that such a fate would never befall another student under her authority.
Bloodrose finally showed her face for the first time.
Guns locked everyone else out of the exercise room.
Becky and Dina did it.
The Leafs won at sports.
Let’s not be ridiculous here.
Joe had a foursome with triplets.
Joyce fucked Mike to literal death.
Great, now I’m jealous of Mike.
Everyone caught COVID and the couples had to Isolate in dorm rooms together for 2 weeks. That’s why they broke up.
Mary seduced Billie, made sure Ruth caught them together, and then converted a distraught Billie to her particular sector of Christianity. Hence her current smugness.
Dumbing of Age Book 12: WHAT HAPPENED ON HALLOWEEN?
It would have to be one long ass flashback to justify titling a whole book after it.
Wain’s World flashback!
Whatever happened on Halloween must have been extremely bad considering Mary is smiling.
Mary smiling is like Trump throwing a tantrum.
😑 thanks for putting that image in our heads
After realizing the phrase “Don’t Stop Believing” only occurs at the end of the song, its only chorus, “Don’t” by Neil Cicierega is now being played at the broken strike plate
I guess Mary’s art is staying up until Groundhog Day
My guess: Ruth drives drunk puts Billie in the hospital. Ruth breaks up with Billie.
What the hell was Halloween!? I kept my piece about it because I thought it would be addressed in do time but Willis keeps fucking with us by dangling it over our heads like one does with a dog and a treat it really wants.
Dude wait like ten seconds more, the next story is about to explain to you.
I think it’s fair to discuss whether this whole something-big-happened-over-the-timeskip style of storytelling is really enjoyable/effective or not, but it’s pretty funny to me that people are reaching their breaking point with it so close to the reveal.
I mean, assuming “This Was Halloween” is actually a reveal. If it’s more fucking with us…
This is like leaving the subway station just before the train arrives.
Personally I was never interested in Halloween and still am not. I figure the time skip shook up the status quo a bit and the mysteries of what happened made it fun. We don’t really need to know the why of things sometimes. Sometimes the answers are even unsatisfying. I tr
-ust Willis to tell a good story but I also have to admit it’s a little bitter sweet to lose the ambiguity of some developments.
Agreed. It’ll be interesting to see who in the comments have to backtrack who they were caping for once what happened is revealed.
We get 55 days of Halloween. Don’t be a downer.
Dang, we only get 1 day of Halloween over here in Britain. Good job always having things bigger America.
Wait, you meant in the strip, didn’t you?
No, Halloween does go on for a while in parts of the states. There’s ding-dong doorbell night, mischief night (also called Devil’s Night), Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Dia de Muertos… sometimes these happen on the same night, sometimes the festivities get spread out over a week or more. Depends on the community.
…You’re right, it IS bigger in the States!
Go figure, the country that takes up like half a continent has more variety than an island you can walk across in a couple hours.
Like when it was revealed that DW grew up to be a cop.
I like the Legend of Korra, but I’m forever bitter that Toph grew up to be a cop.
(And in a wider sense, yeah, sometimes– often– the flashforwards at the ends of shows or as extras or whatever just aren’t necessary. Like, I mostly watch shows where I like the characters, so it’s nice to see them happy, but it feels superficial.)
Perhaps it is because we seek characters that we can also live vicariously through in ways that feel more “real” but also satifying?
Tops being a cop isn’t so bad in Avatar, although yeah it is disappointing. Especially since she was so anti-authority. I chose to see it as the more Hollywood idealized version of cops than the incompetent and/or corrupt and cowardly bullies we have in real life.
Eh, copaganda isn’t a great defense, though I see the show as more police-neutral overall. Which still isn’t great for Toph.
It’s also, like, the Avatar comics start to show stepping stones for how Toph got to be a cop, but those comics are coming out after Legend of Korra, so instead of natural character growth and exploration, it just feels forced with a foregone conclusion.
Yeah. I did love the ending, but I felt they could have made the queer text more explicit. They kind of beat around the bush when they had a beautiful lady-lady love story on their hands.
I mean, I loved the ending of the cartoon, where Korra and Asami finally make their goo-goo eyes out in the open.
“They could have made the queer text more explicit”– well, I don’t know about that. I mean, I would have loved it, but they had to fight hard enough to do what they did. It’s possible that they really *couldn’t* have done much more. To me, what we did get felt very natural, and it served a very important place in the trajectory of queer content in kids’ shows.
All that said, I do respect the desire for there to have been more. There’s a Korra movie planned for the future, so if that happens, hopefully we’ll get a good amount of Korrasami content (but not in the form of drama, ideally– I think in the first two seasons, the show was really bogged down by the way shipping stuff was handled). The comics have kisses, but I want to see them animated.
Ooh, thanks for telling me about the movie! I can’t wait!
Flashforwards have been dead to me ever since I discovered that Kevin didn’t marry Winnie.
…The Wonder Years. Took me a minute, there.
I usually think of Star Wars and Midichlorians. Is Star Wars better now that we know what the Force is? Not really, not to me anyway, it was better as a mystery. Knowing why Ruth and Billie, or to a lesser extent Walky and Amber broke up might be interesting, or it might not live up to expectation, or be unsatisfying in some other way.
That…wasn’t a burning question extremely relevant to the plot though.
This very much is.
If you don’t want to know, you can always just stop reading. Or skip the next storyline and hope you don’t pick up on it with context clues.
Saying just don’t read isn’t really a great answer or even really the point. I’m not particularly adverse to knowing the answer and the comment discussions I like engaging with make it virtually impossible to stay ignorant anyway.
I was just giving my opinion on the story telling devise of this type of flashback. Like I said I trust Willis to tell a good story, I just think sometimes a mystery is better. We don’t always have to know every detail. I can respect that some readers do like having every answer though.
Midichlorians are just mitochondria. That’s my theory, anyway.
Is that a reference to how mitochondria are actually bacteria that merged with eukariotic cells to eventually change all of life on earth over a billion years ago? 😃
Mitochondria + chloroplasts, the other endosymbiotic organelle.
I don’t even know if “organelle” is the right word for them.
They have their own DNA, and if they’re destroyed in the cell, they don’t regenerate.
So does the nucleus, and it gets called an organelle. 😉
Seeing symbiotes like myself change all life on the planet billions of years ago, just so…. inspiring 😊
…Or you could think of the mitochondria as being like the host universes described in “A Wind In the Door,” by Madeleine L’Engle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wind_in_the_Door#Plot_summary
Midichlorians are the powerhouse of the Force.
The thing with midichlorians is they were tacked on after the fact. That’s risky, you aren’t always going to come up with something worth explaining.
When it’s something that people had planned in advance, deciding a certain aspect of the story is better to save as a surprise for later on, it tends to go a bit better.
Or in a very diabolical twist, the information that technically “explains” it just raises more questions than it answers.
The midichlorians don’t bother me at all, and I don’t get why they make so many people upset. The midichlorians aren’t even plot-relevant; even the Force is still a mystery (…so, instead of humans having magic powers, their endosymbionts have magic powers… nothing has actually changed there).
“any sufficiently analyzed magic is science”
Readers and fans of Dumbing of Age,
We only have to wait one more day,
Til it finally can be seen,
All the drama of Halloween!
I am the one drinking all your rum
Eating all the cake and leaving only crumbs
Is that why the rum is always gone??
That’s cute.
Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?
Come with us and you will see
This, our town of Halloween
I am the one pissing under your stairs
Framing your cat and earning her glares
Mischief and mayhem make a wonderful pair
Come with us if you dare
It’s weird seeing Mary don’t use a possibility for tell her, distorted, version of the story to someone so shocked and confused to probably believe in everything she will say. I’m sad for Jason here. Ruth is still no over her dangerous ex and just go away for poisson herself with alcohol. Probably the best thing for him is go away, but disgracefully he seems to really like Ruth a lot.
“When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
Brilliant! 😆
Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?
on second thought, I don’t wanna know what happened on Halloween.
FINALLY
Schrodinger’s Halloween
Maybe one of these days Jason gets to be in a healthy relationship.
Oh, and Mary just is the absolute worst.
Or in a relationship with Mary. I’m sure his father will love her!
Jason’s father is a supervillain, not an evangelical. I’m sure his standards are higher than that.
Part of me hopes that what happened on Halloween was something completely benign that everyone just decided to blow way out of proportion
Nah, that’s the commenters not the characters.
Oh, Sarah kept the witch chibi
What the fuck Mary? You were yelling all that good shit a moment ago and now you just go for one word answers? Spill the beans Mary! Spill the LORE!
This is either going to be a constant noodle incident,
or we are going to get a book tittled
“What happened on Halloween?????!!???!?!!???!”
And yep. Jason is all of us 😛
JFC would someone please Toedad Mary? Or something equally fatal and messy?
Anything but that! A fate worse than Toedad! X-D
Do I have enough popcorn? I have less than one day to get more popcorn!
…On a completely unrelated note, I finally just finished the very last assignment for a project I’ve been working on for the past 25 months.
All done. No more. All gone. (As I used to say to the pup dog, when explaining why I could no longer play with him or give him treats.)
Time to walk away, delete all my files, reformat my brain. No more of that whole field of knowledge. All done. Gotta just admit defeat (or at least a tactical retreat and impasse) and walk away.
Time to fill the brain up with new information, get ready to plunge into a whole different field, after 25 months’ absence from it.
It’s scary. And sad. And a little peaceful. And bittersweet. And regretful. It’s all those things.
We didn’t succeed in our mission. But the mission didn’t quite beat us yet, either. So it’s a tactical retreat, to conserve forces and defend other fronts. With hope that the reinforcements will come from somewhere else, and will be enough.
Uh, this sounds vaguely military? Not gonna pry, but I’m not sure we should know about it if it is.
I assume it’s metaphorical and they’re not talking about literal reinforcements.
Wait til it turns out Laura was leading the research team that’s gonna invent Sephiroth. You’re gonna look silly and my personal bunker will look really smart in hindsight.
A personal bunker is ALWAYS in order! ;-D
Thank you for being so sensitive about pronouns, Alex! That was very thoughtful of you. 😀
Oh, no, sorry sorry! Not military. Public health.
That sounds like really important work!
Regardless of whether you succeeded in your mission, just dedicating so much to it must come from a really good place. 🥲
Well, a sad place, anyway. It’s like that old song goes: “Sadness comes from a quiet place.”
(Plays Radical Dance Faction on the hacked Muzak:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EvCbVTt9QhU )
Imagine Joe and Dorothy merged their Spreadsheets,
Life imitates art;
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWhtRyOWAAMP4mJ?format=jpg&name=4096×4096
Is the OP of that post perhaps Mark Elliot Zuckerberg?
You’re British, Jason, you should know that anything can happen on Halloween.
Hey Willis? You’re a right shite.
Seems uncalled-for.
At least we’re gonna learn now.
You know I do think it would be kind of funny if we never found out what happened on Halloween.
This is is the most evil Mary has ever been…
So, after so many people shitting on Jason, it turns out he’s all of us. How do you feel now, commentariat? HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW? /s
Kinda hungry, mostly.
Fuck, now *I*’m hungry.
There is always more halloween
there is always more money in the halloween stand
Looks like ‘Halloween’ is going the be DoA’s ‘Newcastle’
What happened on Halloween?
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
As a reader I’ve been pretty annoyed at the timeskip. Maybe we’re finally about to be filled in on what the eff happened.
Considering “This Was Halloween” is an entire chapter, it might still be a while before we find out what happened on Halloween.
Everything. EVERYTHING happened on Halloween.
that chapter starts tomorrow tho
Aren’t chapters usually a day long in comic time?
sarah still has her witch drawing up!
I just looked through Mary’s tag- her appearance in this arc is the first time we’ve seen her in over a year! this comic makes time go weird
I actually thought it had been way longer than that.
Jason is all of us right now.
How dare you accuse me of being Bri’ish
Chainsaw man reference xD
I have been looking forward to Halloween since forever, and like I’m obviously super excited to learn about all the- drama, plot, backstory and everything!
…on the other hand I think I’m equally, if not more excited, to see costumes.
OH and I just noticed the sarah art reveal after mary moved omg love that as part of the transition
haha yeah why do they still have the witch Sarah on their door in January
really really wanted Mary to get that exposure
(whoops meant to reply that to ana lol)